On School Brand Image

With a good brand image, a school can earn the trust from both parents and students, win the support from education administrations, and draw attention from investors, thereby making it a winner in fierce competition. Therefore, creating a school's brand image is no longer a matter of "whether we should do it", but a matter of "we must do it".This paper tries to study the building of a school's brand image from theoretical and practical perspectives. On the theoretical side, it highlights the significance and guidelines of the building of a school's brand image based on multidimensional analyses on its brand image. It illustrates its significance in a new age and principles that should be followed during operation. It then analyzes the elements of a school's brand image and puts forward five key elements-schooling concept, school behaviors, visual identity, education quality and schooling features. It offers specific measures for those five elements. First, the president should become more aware of the brand. Second, the school culture should be improved with cultural additions to the school's brand image. Third, the education quality should be strengthened to improve school' s brand image. Fourth, PR activities for the school should be well planned to do a good job in the promotion of its brand image. On the practical side, this paper focuses its presentation on case studies and analyses. First of all, it gives a general idea about how Beijing Chaoyang Community College (BJCCC) is building its brand image. Then, it summarizes its experience and strategies in the process. In the end, it presents a brief analysis on the whole job done by BJCCC.Building a school's brand image is a new task in the education management field. The author hopes that this paper can usher in both theories and models for me building of a school's brand image in the future.